


At Dream's End

by xpityx



Category: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21761194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx
Summary: SkekGra doubted his hands could create life: not after all the blood he had sowed into the earth.
Relationships: skekGra & urGoh (Dark Crystal)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	At Dream's End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magistera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magistera/gifts).



⟁

  
  


SkekGra, the Conqueror, the Heretic: so many names, and yet the most sacred remained buried under the agonies of separation—almost forgotten. Names were important to the being they once were: names gave status, meaning and direction. They were given names three times in their lives: the first when they were born; the second when they spilt first blood; and the third was their death-name: to be taken from this world into the next. There were no Elders to give him his death-name here, and skekGra worried he would bear the name Heretic into the next life. How would his kin know him with such a name? When he walked under the Stone Arch, would the Guardians even acknowledge him, diminished as he was? Would he spend the next life a nameless wraith, unable to even call for his other self, for urGoh? 

It was these thoughts and more that had driven him to betray the Skeksis, to renounce his previous bloodthirsty ways and seek instead unity between the creatures of Thra: between him and his lighter half. They had known that to take their pleas to the Emperor had been stupid, but, well, urGoh had convinced him to try. SkekGra was sure that when they split urGoh had gotten all of their courage. Even standing in the same room as the Crystal made skekGra nervous. He wondered how the others could not see it: the terrible dark wound the Crystal carried that seeped into the stone and the ground; that seeped between the Skeksis and their Mystics.

After, when they’d escaped with their lives and not much else, he’d bandaged up urGoh’s broken limbs, his bleeding eye, urGoh had said _that went as well as expected_ in his calm way.

It had taken some time before skekGra had stopped laughing, and then they had cried together, slow tears falling from urGoh’s bloody face while skekGra had sobbed and shook. 

  
  


⟁

  
  


First, they made the Dual Glaive. They waited sixty trine for a Gelfling to come claim it and to lead all Thra to victory before they realised that they needed to _tell_ someone about the mystic sword they had forged, so skekGra set about making Lore. UrGoh would have helped he was sure, but he was too sad to move for trine at a time: so sad that skekGra had to ladle spoonfuls of the broth he made from the vines that climbed their tower into urGoh’s mouth, urging him to swallow each time. 

SkekGra doubted his hands could create life, not after all the blood he had sowed into the earth, but the fear that urGoh might just disappear into the air if he didn’t find a way to fix them spurred him to desperate invention. He carved and sawed, sewed and soldered. He spoke words of magic to the sun and spat curses in the dark.

UrGoh roused himself for the first time in an age to pull a blade of sunlight from the air and trap it with the gem that would give Lore life. Polished stone, carved with runes and soaked in blood and spit rolled up and up into a pattern than skekGra had only guessed at. Lore turned its head this way and that, regarding its creators. 

SkekGra drew himself up to his full height and puffed out his chest. _He_ had made this creature, _he_ had pulled together dirt and rock and given it life. SkekGra! The Conqueror who had destroyed so many; the Heretic who had been cast out from the light of the Crystal.

UrGoh made his way slowly round Lore, running a hand over the grooved stones here and there. Lore watched them as well it was able, turning in a circle to keep urGoh in view.

“It can’t speak,” urGoh concluded. 

SkekGra deflated. 

“I’m sure I’m supposed to be the pessimistic one,” he complained.

He stayed where he was so urGoh could wander slowly over to him and give him a desultory pat on the shoulder.

“It is very good, a good messenger. Where will you send it?”

SkekGra winced a little at the ‘you’. UrGoh had only started speaking of them as separate entities some sixty trine ago and it still hurt to hear it. 

“To the Vapra Clan,” he replied, attempting to sound like he’d thought about it for more than the last twelve seconds.

UrGoh gave him a look that suggested he knew how much thought had gone into that decision and set about devising a way for Lore to communicate a little. 

Even after all this time he still forgot that they were not part of each other, that they could not hear each other’s thoughts. They worked together on encoding the stones with messages for the Gelfling, though it was tedious work. SkekGra started conversations halfway through and became angry when urGoh could not follow them. UrGoh reminded him over and over that they were not in each other’s minds, that he needed to start from the beginning, that he needed to _explain_. It was maddening, and so very slow. 

“Tell me again what you wanted to say to me,” urGoh said each time, and skekGra would tell him, and urGoh would give his reply in the same slow way as skekGra had expected him to.

“That’s what I _thought_ you’d say, but you weren’t in my head to say it!”

“It has been this way for some time,” urGoh pointed out, the master of understatement as always.

“Yes, yes and it’s still awful!” SkekGra replied, routing through a box that containing nothing but different lengths of twine. UrGoh’s hair was hanging in his eyes again and skekGra was convinced it was going to cause him to blunder over the cliff face or some other such catastrophe.

“A-ha!” he crowed, holding up a suitable length.

They had sent Lore to the Vapra that very morning: newly carved groves of sound on its arm to play to one who could solve their little riddle. UrGoh had convinced skekGra that giving the message to the first Gelfling that Lore tripped over was a bad idea, so he had devised a test of sorts. Well, a riddle. Now Lore was somewhere in the vast Wastes, making its way to the high white towers of the Vapra.

Once urGoh had suffered through having his hair tied back they went and sat on the cliff edge, legs dangling. SkekGra fancied that he could still see the tiny speck that was Lore, loping over the sand dunes. 

“Do you think he’ll come back soon?” He asked, unable to keep the wistful note out of his voice.

UrGoh seemed to consider that for a while, long enough for the both the Great Sun and the Rose Sun to set and for the shadows to roll up from the desert floor.

“No,” he decided.

SkekGra nodded. What else was there to do? They would wait, together but painfully separate, until the day came for them to meet whatever end awaited them. 

  
  


⟁


End file.
